Eric Zuesse -- Ukrainian Army holding Mariupol brings residents into secretly bomb-set drama-theater there, blows them up, announces Russia bombed it.

 

Ukrainian Army holding Mariupol brings residents into secretly bomb-set drama-theater there, blows them up, announces Russia bombed it.

 

Eric Zuesse, March 17, 2022

 

On Wednesday, March 16th, Russia’s Tass news agency headlined “Azov battalion militants blow up Mariupol theater building — Defense Ministry”, and reported:

 

Militants of the Azov nationalist battalion blew up the Mariupol theater building, which they rigged with explosives earlier, Russian Defense Ministry announced Wednesday.

The Defense Ministry debunked Kiev’s accusations of an airstrike on the theater building, where civilians could have been held hostage.

"During daylight on March 16, Russian aviation carried out no missions involving strikes on ground targets within Mariupol limits. According to the verified information, militants of the Azov nationalist battalion carried out another bloody provocation by blowing up the rigged theater building," the Ministry of Defense said.

 

The next day, CNN bannered “Survivors emerge from rubble of Mariupol theater bombed by Russia” and reported:

 

People sheltering in a theater in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol are emerging from the building after it was bombed, the former head of the Donetsk region said Thursday.

Hundreds of people were thought to have taken shelter in the theater amid the ongoing Russian siege of Mariupol.

 

CNN had not asked Russia’s Ministry of Defense to show them the evidence they had backing up the claim that “During daylight on March 16, Russian aviation carried out no missions involving strikes on ground targets within Mariupol limits.” Apparently, CNN was interested ONLY in information that was being supplied by Ukraine’s government. Of course, ‘reporting’ in that way is only propaganda — not journalism.

 

See the detailed and fully documented account of this matter, here, which persuades me that Tass got it right, and that CNN got it wrong. I have checked out all of its linked-to sources and found them to be not only extremely credible but some of them are thoroughly mainstream, such as Deutsche Welle (the German public broadcaster), Newsweek, The Nation, Stanford University, and Amnesty International.